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Upcoming site update - PLEASE READ

Hey everyone, I wanted to take a few minutes to let you know that we have a long-overdue site update coming in the next few days and since a lot of stuff is going to change I thought it best to let you know what to expect. So, here are some details.

When is it happening? How long will it take? Squirrel!
We're aiming to bring the site down for the update the weekend of the 18th, though we might be a few days behind that. I'll update this post when I am certain. The site will probably be down for 2-3 days but hit us up on Twitter or Facebook for updates. We're a small crew and some of the database stuff we need to run just takes a lot of time, sadly.

What is changing?
Basically everything. We're making a lot of changes. Primarily to streamline the site and get it back to it's more Chuck-centric roots. As a result, we're going to get rid of a bunch of unused or rarely used things.

All new design. We are aiming for a mobile-friendly design but that might be week or two longer to allow more testing.

The first thing that the forum posters will notice is that we're getting rid of the old-school forum listing. Instead, we're moving to a more "stream-based" forum listing. This basically means that the front page of the forums will be more like the "New posts" page.

We will be consolidating many of the existing forums.

We will be removing the "recommendations" and replacing them with recommendations from Chuck exclusively.

We are going to make it a lot easier for fans to submit their pictures to the site instead of the tedious process we currently have (email)

Hopefully a new anti-spammer measure.

Facebook logins (don't worry you don't have to use this).

What is going away?
The following things will be deleted from the site. As such, I suggest you save anything you want now.

We are getting rid of "groups" and all content they contain.

We will be removing all of the legacy Workshop forums.

We will be removing signatures - sorry people who still like them, it's not 1998 anymore :P

We will be deleting all avatars. The new site will have avatars but at this point, as a cleanup mechanism, it's just way easier for us to delete them all and let you re-upload.

Much of the data in member profiles will be deleted because, well, no one really uses that stuff and there are better places for that, these days.

The chat room is getting axed.

Other infrequently-used items like the "Community dashboard" and "Calendar" will be going away.

We are removing the ability for you to upload files on posts for two reasons. First, it is now easy for you to use a 3rd party upload service that gives you better control of your files than we can. Second, it is a bit of a legal liability that we've had to deal with on occasion.

We will be pruning user accounts that are old and have never been used.

We will be pruning posts older than 3 months that had fewer than 5 comments.

The super-secret mod/admin forums will go away since we never seem to use them.

The "whos online" page - rarely used.

The member list page - rarely used

Just to be safe...

As always, if you have something crucial on the site, make sure you have a personal copy, just in case something goes terribly wrong.

If you have any important private messages, please back them up. There is a chance that they might be wiped.

The "buddylist" mechanism is going to be changed, so you will have to re-add them. If you need to know who they all are, you might want to copy your current list.

There is of course a lot more but these are the main things I wanted people to be aware of - especially as it relates to data-removal. If you have any questions, let me know.

This is a lot less of an inconvenience for me. My inbox consists of like three messages. Hehe
For me, it's like as if I had walked into a movie theater, and right after I sit down, the usher scurries over and says, "I'm sorry, but these seats are going to be renovated; could you please move to these ones?"
For you guys it's like your great-great-grandfather's home, that he built with his bare hands, is burning down right in front of you, along with all the memories therein.

Nah, that happened a few years ago. It was anarchy. Thunder... Thunder... Thundersomething. ThunderIdon'tknow.

I was but a child so my memories are hazy. But I remember one of the Nicks took my avatar, effectively stealing my identity. I decorated my sig with pictures of swastikas because... I don't know? Sarah was playing truth or dare and took a dare and a scandalous picture. A other things that I have forgotten.

This is a lot less of an inconvenience for me. My inbox consists of like three messages. Hehe
For me, it's like as if I had walked into a movie theater, and right after I sit down, the usher scurries over and says, "I'm sorry, but these seats are going to be renovated; could you please move to these ones?"
For you guys it's like your great-great-grandfather's home, that he built with his bare hands, is burning down right in front of you, along with all the memories therein.

Oh man, I'm gonna have to spend some time going through my years worth of PMs. Good catch, Ludwig!

Like I said, I'm going to try to keep everyone's PMs. But there is an instance in which I might not be able to, so I just want people prepared.

Fano wrote:

I'm kind of glad for this, actually. I mean, I understand the concern some people have, but I think it'll probably make things easier once we get used to it.

Don't worry, it's not going to be that big of a change, like it was when Thunderdome happened. Rather, we're doing some much-needed house keeping. Most of the stuff we're getting rid of hasn't been used in months or is used very infrequently (thanks google analytics!)

In reality, probably 90% of the stuff here will still remain, only it will have a new wrapper on it.

May we pretty please with sugar and a cherry and sprinkles and cream and other lovely things on top keep signatures?

If you would, observe and notice: nearly everyone here has one. We do, in fact, like them much, 1998 or 2013 or any otherwise.

I actually do not have one just now myself, but that is just because I am choosing to be all different for just now by not having one (not really, more like I haven't thought of anything creative/read anything creative that I care to put there at the moment and/or I am being lazy).

We do like our signatures. It would be nice if we could keep them.

Other stuff like personal whatever on individual profiles is less amusing or important.

If I look at the whose online and I am the only one I feel all weird creepy and sad about myself and beat myself up about low aspirations and meandering away my time with nothing and log off and don't want to look at the internet at all for a while.

I wish we could go back to the old way of deleting posts. On the old site we could check a box next to each post and then click delete. So if a thread had a ton of spam, it was just as easy to delete as if it was only one post.

Now we have to do each thing one at a time.

That sucks when we get a spammer like last week who posted 800 posts in one thread...

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